Monday, September 27, 2010

Images Of War, Finally Unpacked

New York Times... Images Of War, Finally Unpacked. "...Somehow, in the summer of 1970, I ended up in an anarchist campground deep in the mountains of Southern France. Most of the campers were young French and Italian live wires, tense, raucous, full of theater. But there was also a contingent of older people, Spanish Civil War veterans, still fugitives after 30 years, living out of the backs of vans.They were the ones I wanted to talk to. I wanted to ask one thing: What was it like to be there back then, at a prophetic moment in modern history, in a war that continues, for some, to be burnished with an ethical glow? But they were reticent, and our jumble of Spanish, French and English probably wouldn’t have taken us far, anyway.After all these years I’ve found some answers to my question in an exhibition called 'The Mexican Suitcase' at the International Center of Photography. The show documents wartime life in Spain between 1936 and 1939 from an insider-outsider vantage: through the eyes of three photographers — Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour, known as Chim — who were not Spanish but who were intensely committed to what they saw as a do-or-die anti-fascist struggle." The Mexican Suitcase: Rediscovered Spanish Civil War negatives by Capa, Chim, and Taro at the ICP.